Nusra Front terrorists seize Syria’s Idlib, report says
Al-Qaeda-linked militants have seized Syria’s northwestern city of Idlib from government troops, a UK-based monitoring group says.
“Al-Nusra Front and its allies have captured all of Idlib,” said the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Saturday.
According to the group, the city fell after four days of intensive clashes between the militant groups and government forces.
The Syrian government is yet to confirm the report but earlier a Syrian security source said “terrorist groups had infiltrated the outskirts of the city.”
Idlib has been the epicenter of deadly fighting between government troops and militants for months. It is located near the strategically significant main highway which links the capital, Damascus, to the northern city of Aleppo.
Idlib is the second provincial center to fall into militant hands following the fall of Raqqah in March 2013 to the ISIL Takfiri terrorists.
The al-Nusra Front is a terrorist group which is responsible for heinous acts of terror against innocent civilians in Syria.
Shame and anger
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has expressed anger and shame over the world’s failure to halt the fighting in Syria.
Anger at observing, “...extremist and terrorist groups and terrorists relentlessly destroy their country,” he said at the Arab League summit in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday.
“Shame at sharing in the collective failure of international and regional communities to decisively act to stop the carnage that has afflicted the Arab brothers and sisters of Syria,” he added.
Syria has entered the fifth year of a foreign-sponsored war, which has so far claimed the lives of more than 215,000 people.
SRK/HSN/AS
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